Success Is… Transforming Over Transferring

You’ve likely been hurt, and you’ve hurt others because of unhealed, inner pain. When we think about success, we probably don’t tend to think about inner healing. But the truth is that the willingness to deal with emotional pain is a mark of a successful follower of Jesus.

Pain gives us two choices: (1) we can transfer it onto others, creating more pain and more of a mess, or (2) we can give our pain to God, trusting Him to transform it into something good. My core wound is that I’ve often felt like a failure. I would turn to social media to escape my thoughts, only to find myself triggered by comparison to others I deemed more successful than me. Working through this has involved prayer, confession to trusted friends, sessions with a psychotherapist, and establishing a healthy way of life centred on spiritual disciplines.

I don’t know what your pain looks like, but I know it can manifest in many ways and even affect you physically. And I know the things you revert to for contentment when you don’t know what to do with your pain will likely define the person you become. Try asking yourself, ‘What’s my need behind this behaviour?’ or ‘What’s the emptiness I’m trying to fill?’ And then be aware of how the culture you’re immersed in (falsely) promises to fulfill those needs.

In Psalm 103, David instructs his ‘inmost being’ to praise God, declaring that God ‘satisfies your desires with good things.’ David’s ancient wisdom is so applicable to us: we have deep desires that only God can satisfy, but we’ve ignored this, searching for satisfaction anywhere and everywhere else. This leads our inmost being to become attached to things other than God, which can result in addictions like substance abuse, overworking, exercise, or public affirmation.

Peter seemed to understand that his true desires could only be satisfied by God. In John 21, we read that the disciples had returned to fishing – their old lives. When disappointment struck – they’d watched Jesus die – their pain took them straight back to what they knew. They relapsed to the familiar. So, when Peter recognised Jesus on the shore, he jumped into the sea to get to Him. Only Jesus could heal his shame over denying Jesus three times. Jesus takes Peter aside and asks him three times, ‘Do you love me?’ Each time Peter says, ‘Yes.’ It’s a kind of undoing of his pain – a deliverance. And that inner healing produces results: a couple of weeks later, Peter preaches boldly, and many come to faith.

That’s God’s counterintuitive path to success: your deepest pain can become your greatest victory when you bring that pain to God instead of transferring it onto other people or distracting yourself from it. Whether you struggle with feelings of shame, trauma, aimlessness, or comparison, don’t hide those feelings to look successful. God’s measure of success is so different and so much better. He longs to transform your pain, ushering in true success.